Yes, my friends and foes and all the shops at sea, it’s time again for what is now America’s 693rd favorite pastime, Odd Man Out. I hope you brought your thinking caps, or, at the very least, your cogitating do-rags. You are about to take on the most challenging of these quizzes since Odd Man Out 19.
Judging from all the snarling and gnashing of teeth that your narrator typically encounters after a round of OMO, I think I need to spread a little enlightenment around. Keep in mind, your narrator does not like to see people flummoxed, any more than he likes having to choke down a generous, superbly-prepared serving of Beef Wellington, or, at the very least, a bag of fresh candy.
As I scan the comments section, I am keen to discover readers who have answered two correctly (cum laude), three (magna cum laude), four (summa cum laude) or five (You’re a damn cheat). At this point, I can well imagine my more thoughtful and erudite readers thinking, “Heh, heh, you said ‘cum!'”
Still and all, it is my most fervent desire to increase the right-answer ratio to something that can be discovered without the aid of a microscope, so, to that end, I will drop you a huge hint: The YouTube links on the side are there for a reason. Generally, when your narrator has posted them, there is a musical question afoot. If you will trouble yourself to study the Tubage before you take a crack at the questions, you may find yourself arriving at an extra right answer. Here is where you picture me turning my head and laying a finger to the side of my nose.
Group 1
Julius
Augustus
Claudius
Marcus Aurelius
Group 2
The king of spades
The king of hearts
The king of diamonds
The king of clubs
Group 3
Ozzy Osbourne
Jeb Bush
Doc Holliday
Benny Hill
Group 4
Susanna
Nelly
Jeanie
Matilda
Group 5
The Baltimore Ravens
The Arizona Cardinals
The St. Louis Rams
The Indianapolis Colts
Okay, now that you know the questions, it’s time for the space-stalling excuse for a joke, before we get to those answers.
A couple of amateur hunters got themselves off to Africa, in the hopes of bagging some elephants. So confident were they of their hunting ability, they declined to waste any more money on anything so superfluous as guides.
As a result, they found they were having a hard time locating any of the beasts. Finally, they decided they could cover more ground and increase their chances if they split up.
After several hours of thrashing around, one of the hunters came to a pond where, to his delight, he spotted an elephant taking a drink. The hunter aimed his rifle and peered into the telescopic sight.
At that point, he saw that his prey was amazingly and immensely well-endowed. “Wow,” he said, “I can’t kill anything that well-hung.”
Just then a tiny pink elephant appeared on a branch over the guy’s head. “Oh, thank you, kind sir,” it said.
“WHAAAT?” exclaimed the amazed hunter.
“I am the fairy guardian of all elephants. Because you have spared one of my creatures,” the pink thing went on to say, “I shall grant you one wish.”
“HA!” the hunter snorted, half in jest, “I want genitals just like that elephant I didn’t shoot.”
“Very well, when you wake up tomorrow morning, it shall be so.”
The hunter didn’t give the matter much thought for the rest of the day, having attributed the experience to the whisky in his canteen, but, when he woke up the next morning, he had genitals so huge, he couldn’t get his pants on.
“Where did you get that equipment?” his baffled and very jealous partner demanded to know. The first hunter explained what had happened to him the other day.
“Right, got it!” the other hunter proclaimed as he grabbed his rifle and headed toward that pond.
When he got there, sure enough, there was an elephant, taking a drink.
“OH LOOK, I’VE SPOTTED AN ELEPHANT!” the guy called out, as he leveled his rifle at the target. “BUT WAIT! I’VE CHANGED MY MIND. I WON’T SHOOT THIS ELEPHANT AFTER ALL!”
As he had hoped he would, he saw the same miniature pink elephant his partner had told him about.
“Thank you, kind sir,” it said.
“Yeah, yeah, I know the story, now how about that wish?”
“Certainly, anything you-“
“I WANT GENITALS, JUST LIKE THAT THERE ELEPHANT!”
The next morning he woke up with a vagina that went clear up to his throat.
And now, if I may radically change the subject for a moment, how about some answers?
Group 1
Julius
Augustus
Claudius
Marcus Aurelius
All of these guys ruled ancient Rome, way back when, but only the last three were Roman Emperors. Julius-as in Julius Caesar-was the last ruler, or consul, of the Roman Republic. Despite not having the same impressive title as the other fellows, his rule was every bit as dictatorial, which prompted some in the senate to make sure he got their points.
Group 2
The king of spades
The king of hearts
The king of diamonds
The king of clubs
As any aficionado of poker, bridge, pinochle, the Montana red dog, go-spit-in-the-ocean, or go-puke-in-the-toilet knows, the odd king is the diamond, for either (or both) of two reasons. It is the notorious “king with the axe” (All the others have swords.), and it’s the only one-eyed king.
Group 3
Ozzy Osbourne
Jeb Bush
Doc Holliday
Benny Hill
The OMO here is the 4th guy, Alfred Hawthorne Hill, who, unlike John Michael Osbourne, John Ellis Bush and John Henry Holliday, was not named for a porcelain convenience (I suppose if I were a Brit, I might have used Lew Wallace, Lou Costello and Capt. Lou Albano.).
Group 4
Susanna
Nelly
Jeanie
Matilda
All of these ladies’ names appear in well-known folksongs, but that last one was created by a couple of Aussies named Paterson and Macpherson, rather than Stephen Foster, who wrote “Oh Susanna” (1848), “Nelly Bly” (1850), and “Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair” (1854). By comparison, “Waltzing Matilda” did not come along until 1895, making it dangerously contemporary with gangsta rap by comparison.
Oh, and by the way, your idiot narrator does know that “Matilda” is not a lady at all but, rather, the name the Austrian swagmen gave to their luggage. The act of “waltzing Matilda” meant hitting the road in our equivalent of, “pack up your troubles in an old kit bag.” Extra-credit item: can you spot the obvious typo in this paragraph?
Group 5
The Baltimore Ravens
The Arizona Cardinals
The St. Louis Rams
The Indianapolis Colts
All four of these items are NFL teams that relocated their franchises, but the first entry is the only team in the group that just did it once. The present-day Arizona Cardinals (Is the cardinal even indigenous to that state?) started out as the Chicago Cardinals, then moved to St. Louis, choosing to have a city all to themselves, rather than share a larger one with the Bears. In further pursuit of better demographics, they journeyed to the Phoenix area.
The Cleveland Rams were neither the first nor the last NFL franchise to represent that city (Another was the original Browns, who became the Ravens. A little confusing, isn’t it?). They won the NFL championship the year I was born, but then moved to the more prosperous Los Angeles to make room for those Browns. After a while, in keeping with the NFL’s brilliant decision that L.A. was too dinky a town to support an NFL franchise, they headed off to St. Louis, which, these days, is a little less populated than Wichita, Kansas.
Most NFL fans know that the present-day Indianapolis Colts used to be the Baltimore Colts, but, prior to 1953, they were the Dallas Texans, and, unlike most of the Colt teams to come, they stunk. That may explain the reason for the move.
Just as those football teams show us the transitory nature of things, so it is with the Odd Man Out itself. Your narrator has decided to give it (and you) a rest for the summer. It seems he has been hornswaggled again out of his retirement from the stage (this time, by himself, of all people, with an assist from Thornton Wilder).
In a laughable effort to help you, the frenzied puzzle-junkie “taper off,” I’ll leave you with a simple equation in code. If you worked in retail, several years ago (and I am talking to the over-50 crowd, here) you may be able to crack it with the greatest of ease. Otherwise, the key can be found somewhere in my introductory remarks to this OMO session. Here is the problem:
frcc + efds + hnr =? Helpful hint: y = 0 (zero).
You may answer in letters or numbers, as the mood bestirs you.
I will be back in the fall with even more confounditory bafflements for the bemusement of your towering intellects.
Here is where your narrator removes his tongue from his cheek and turns off the lights.
Sources
who2.com
pdmusic.org
Wikipedia
Dr. Thomas Caceci (for the joke)
